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Internet Explorer is not an application. If you look at the actual EXE it is about a megabyte in size. Internet Explorer is intertwined into the Operating System. It is the same technology that makes the desktop work and it displays data in Windows Explorer. It is why every single windows application made today can show online content within documents. It is part of the OS. Each OS has a minimum version of IE that it will work well with. With Windows XP, that is IE 6.0. XP relies on 6.0's API, its features and its interfaces to do everything from drawing your desktop through all aspects of the computing experience.

Hence the reason Microsoft was sued by the federal government.

There is a simpler way to see how IE5 and IE 5.5 will display webpages under Windows XP. Simply remove your DTD. This throws Internet Explorer into "Quirks" mode which is exactly how the older versions display pages. Replace the DTD and IE 6 is in "Strict" mode where it follows standards more.

windows wont let you downgrade any software that you have installed, not unless you uninstall it, but you cant uninstall ie6 because it comes preinstalled with winxp, so... your screwed. maybe try installing win 98 se, and dual booting between xp and 98